Queen of Bargains
And Her Court®
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If decorating your home with no “chinks in the armor” is your desire, you have to do some fancy footwork to camouflage some stuff, like a computer tower. Computer hutches, fancy, expensive desks, and built in cabinets can all help you out. Unless you are me.
I have a wall of book shelves and a horseshoe desk that is open underneath in my study. The tower sits to the left of my legs between the desk and the wall. It also has its friends of wires, a router, a storm proof generator surge protector right next to it. And all of this can be visible if you look down when entering my home as you see the study on the right. With an open doorway, you see the shelves, the large painting above the router mess, and if you look down, you realize that this room is not “finished.”
Of course, not to disappoint you, I researched selling the desk, buying a new one with electrical ports inside and many other solutions. This took days and I reminded myself that when things are of God they are easy and simple. This was anything but.
Until my dear friend Anabel came to visit. Because she has decorated many houses, I was counting on her to devise a solution. And she did.
She asked me to give her a day while she thought. I backed off and we relaxed and enjoyed the visit. Shortly before she and her husband were about to leave, she told me she had it. Her idea would be extremely low cost and it would work. How about using a plant to disguise the mess?
This was ideal and simple and so we went to Home Depot to find the perfect planter and plant. Shopping, repotting the schifelera and positioning it was all lots of fun. Until one month later we watched the darn thing die, leaf by leaf. With northern exposure, there just wasn’t enough light to support the plant.
So phase two of the idea was to go to Michael’s an d use my coupons to get fake, I mean silk flowers to put in the planter. We brought it with us and customers remarked that our selections worked with the planter and the whole effect was perfect. We got many stems and flowers at 70 % off and were very pleased until we got this new camouflage home. The darn thing was not high enough to do the job.
Not to be defeated, my husband went to Home depot to preshop and brought me there a day later to show me plant stands. But the first foot and an half seemed to open and the mess of wires and tower were still visible.
On a road trip to VA I went into a florist shop in my old neighborhood and saw a gorgeous plant stand that looked like antiqued stone. It matched my bookshelves in the study and seemed to be the right height. The base was ornate and interesting enough to divert the eye from the eyesore behind it, I think. And it was more than half price, reduced from $50 to $20, cheap for NO VA and still high for Florida but OK in the gr and scheme of things.
I can’t wait until I get home to redo this computer mess screen. Keep posted.
In the shopping until we were dropping phase of our move to Florida, my husband who does 98% of the ironing in our family, asked me to buy us a new ironing board.
I know how to do that. You go to Bed Bath and Beyond or Linens and Things or Wal-Mart and buy one for about $25-35.
So that’s what I did. I bought one and brought it home only to have the legs bend and buckle within hours of its first use. This bargain was called garbage and we threw it in the trash.
I set out to buy the most expensive ironing board I could find, with durability features that would stand the test of real use. I had no idea how much this would cost.
I went to BB B and asked for the best ironing board money could buy. $98 later, I was the proud owner of a Bosch board. It is oversized, sturdy and has a place to keep the iron on the back on a metal rack. There is a place to store stuff underneath and to hang ironed clothing around the back edges. It is the king of ironing Boards.
This is a very short story with a moral. Sometimes you have to spend much more money than you think is reasonable for an ordinary household item. Don’t hold back or you will be sorry. Quality sometimes costs extra money. Period.
The best and most important room of any home should be the pantry.
“What pantry?” you shriek in outrage. I barely have enough room to cook, eat, and sleep. There’s no pantry!”
Make one.
A pantry can be a false wall with many shelves from floor to ceiling hidden behind. A pantry can be an unused closet, if any of you should ever have that incredible situation. A pantry can be against the back wall of a garage or even a storage shed. I suppose a pantry could be cleverly built drawers on castors that roll out from under beds.
Wherever you can hide one, try to do so.
What goes in a pantry? Besides the obvious rows of canned foods, staples like flour, sugar and pasta, soups and paper muffin cups, there can be pots, pans, candles, candle holders, table cloths, napkins, cleaning supplies, sets of dishes, presents received to use or regift someday, wrapping paper, supplies for hurricane or storm season or the next time there is a power outage including cases of water and additional canned goods, you get the idea.
I also have my good china there at a height where I can reach the pieces without standing on a ladder. And I have a secondary set of red glass dishes that I have begun to collect.
I also keep an assortment of tea bags and leaves in appropriate containers with tea balls, strainers, and pots to reach easily when I need a “cuppa”.
We even keep some extra paper for the computer printer, packages of labels and other forms that are used occasionally. This keeps the office uncluttered with extra storage furniture.
A pantry is the clutter of a home all stashed on shelves out of the way so that your living space is clean, clear and peaceful to look at.
I am living in a home with a pantry room because I built it that way. I didn’t know how smart I was. We often smile as we look around and say, “We live in a model home because all the extras are hidden in the pantry. Because we have 12 foot ceilings, we could add several shelves above the ones we have. But we have enough space for what we own right now. Can you imagine? I’ve never lived this way before and I love it.
I recently had a pantry of sorts built
into the wall of the master bath. Have you ever had a medicine
cabinet big enough to store your potions and lotions and beauty
tools? The cabinets under the sink are too low for comfort and the
squinky medicine cabinet on the wall to the left of my sink just
barely holds the immediate necessaries of daily hygiene.
My carpenter sunk the bathroom pantry
into the wall between studs. It goes in a few inches and sticks out a
few inches and is covered with louvered doors that match the
plantation shutters we have throughout the house. It really looks
good and does the job.
Now we use the space under the sink cabinets to store extra towels.
Pantries are the secret for home organization that are the least appreciated. Until now.
Unless your home was bombed in a crisis or wiped out by Katrina, it is rare that you get a chance to decorate one from scratch. Unless you lost everything in a divorce or repossession, or sold everything down to the walls to pay off debts, or just got out of college and snagged a great job and you can begin your life as an owner of stuff, you have furniture, clothes and some personal effects that you tote from place to place every now and then with job changes.
Now more than a few of you are beginning to see yourselves.
We moved abruptly to Florida to care for my mother-in-law who will be 101 in two months. We left our home in No. VA and rented it furnished to friends. Therefore, with only a small trailer towed behind, we trudged in our vehicle to Florida and began a buying binge that lasted for months.
We brought the master bed, the dining room furniture and some paintings.
We bought dishes, other beds, bedding, mattresses, an easy chair and ottoman, a sectional sofa, a cocktail table, breakfast table and 4 upholstered parsons chairs, back porch wrought iron furniture and fire pit (6 pieces), a wall of book shelves, Florida fun clothing, new lighting fixtures for foyer, dining room, breakfast room, outside foyer, garage and two bathrooms. We also bought 4 ceiling fans with lights new bathroom faucets, and replacements for a double door front entry way. We added to our home accessories with wrought iron architectural corners, decorative mirrors, and 11 new paintings.
In addition, we had some work done. We had crown molding put in every room including the bathrooms and the toilet room. We had crown molding put around the columns decorating the family room and foyer and the tray ceilings with ribbon lighting inside the family room tray. My workman also installed can lights in the family room, a special light a recess in the wall at the end of the hall, and chair railing in the dining room and the hall where my mother-in-law careens in her wheel chair from wall to wall.
In the master bathroom we had a sunken bathroom pantry type closet put in a wall and plantation shutters installed on all the windows except for those in the front that don’t need privacy because we have no neighbors there. Our porch was screened and tiled and all the paintings were hung.
We did this with a budget in 10 months and when we were done, we were done.
Are you exhausted yet?
I had so much fun strategizing and hunting for the right stuff. And we are exhilarated with the choices and feel that we made great decisions.
How could this be done without a
decorator, without debt and without going broke. I’ll tell you,
“Carefully.”
We had studied pictures in magazines
and catalogs on and off-line. The style we were going for is a bit
Provencal with burgundies, reds, some greens, golds, off-white and a
stone look in some areas. We wanted a European, expensive feel to the
place. And we wanted quality and quantity.
Where did the money come from?
We sold an investment property in Williamsburg and tithed the money for a family cruise in January and decorating the house. When it was spent, we stopped.
What a plan! What a novel idea! What fun!
And we love living in this home that we built together.
So you have all these books and you have outgrown bricks and boards for shelves or orange crates or boxes in the garage that might be cataloged but difficult to access. What are you going to do now?
Having moved to a new home with out one built in shelf for books, I had this dilemma. I reasoned: I could have a carpenter custom build shelves for the wall that was 156” in length and 12 feet high. I’ll bet $10,000 later I would really have something!
Or I could call in California Closets and do the same thing.
Instead, I began the catalog “dance”. I looked at everyone that came in the door and trust me, I get about 15 per week. I wish their business justified all this paper they send out but I’m afraid it doesn’t. My catalogs come from: Horchow, Winterthur, Bllard Designs, Austin, Home Decorators, A Touch of Class , etc.
I stared and stared and tried to visualize the effect until the Tuscan shelves from Ballard became my first choice. Finished in an off-white with fluted edges, crown molding along the top edges and snug fitting pieces, they came in the width of 154”. That seemed as if it would have a custom look and be gorgeous to boot.
And I was right, for a change.
Actually, I put it to my husband like this. Which set of shelves do you think will work in the study, the 96 inch ones or the bigger set? It could be my birthday present this year.
I can’t begin to tell you how many “birthday” presents I have wangled this year with this tactic. But my husband is as visual as I am and he saw the need for shelving in this room.
If you balk at the thought of spending more than $2,000 for bookshelves, think again. They were on sale so we saved more than $700. They fit perfectly and look perfect in the room. And they cost less than the totally custom ones at $10,000 or more.
Besides, when and if we ever sell the house, they would convey and that would be a great selling point.
Think of it as an open pantry for books
I rest my case.
When son # 2 announced that he would be marrying within 6 months, I knew I had my work cut out for me. My dress needed to “fit in” and yet flatter and I felt overwhelmed.
Would they help me out?
I sent them picture after picture of gorgeous dresses I found online and my son and future daughter-in-law did not respond. I figured I was not “getting it.”
Finally, she sent me pictures of the dress her mom would be wearing. It was bronze, rouched all over and clearly her mom must be svelte and trim in order to wear this.
Where do I go for fashion advice? The beauty salon where I get my toenails done!
Gina, the best pedicurist in the world, in my estimation, has great taste and she would announce it to the entire salon and we would get a vote going.
Within seconds, she pronounced that “Silver” was to be my color. I never would ever have thought of such a thing. I have never worn a silver dress and despite the fact that metallics are very big this year, I was flummoxed.
Nevertheless, I went online and within seconds, gorgeous silver dress appeared, featured on sale by Neiman Marcus. A Kay Unger design, it was reduced from $645 by half and after calling the online help desk, I found out there were only 3 left.
Not knowing what size I would wear, I ordered 2 with the idea that I would return one.
Which is exactly what I did.
This dress is gorgeous, actually a silver shirtwaist, very 1960’s, the decade when I graduated high school, college and graduate school and was very into the fashion of the day. A return to my roots and a chance to also be current in fashion was an opportunity not to be missed, and at half price!
When it arrived, I called in my gorgeous neighbor who also has exquisite taste to pronounce the final judgment. It fit and was flattering. I thought so all along just from the picture, but corroboration is a confidence booster.
All I would have to do was to buy the shoes and bag, a much easier task, I thought.
Bottom line is that the dress worked well for me at the wedding. Even more than 8 young women came over to me at different time complimenting me on my dress so I figured that I had nailed it. Even more, the bronze mother-of-the-bride dress turned out to be pale gold, not bronze and so we looked like well-coordinated book ends in the pictures.
However, after the wedding, I happened to be browsing the dress racks in Macy’s and I found my silver dress in a knockoff version for $145! I was humbled and then I remembered that this used to happen to my mom frequently. She would buy a great dress at Saks Fifth Avenue and then find the knock off version all over town, from Sears, say or some other store. I particularly remember a brown and white polka dot sun dress that was about the most popular dress in the world one year. My mom wore hers proudly until she got tired of seeing herself coming and going all over town.
That’s the truth. I was raised to value uniqueness in attire which is a snobbism that seems ridiculous. Men don’t have that problem, even with ties. If two men show up at an event with the same gorgeous tie, they congratulate one another for having great taste!
We women want to look like we are wearing haute couture, made only for us, with out the “haute” price tag.
The wedding is over and I still have the dress. It remains to be seen where and when I wear it again. I’d like to think that I will not be petty. But there’s quite a difference between my thoughts and my actions with this one. Drats!
I wish the answer was that simple. With my apologies to Shakespeare and Hamlet, I humbly admit that I am very jealous of women, especially black women, famous actresses of any race, and TV personalitites, who can get away with wearing wigs and hair extensions for everyday use.
I know and you know that Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Kidman and Oprah Winfrey wear these hair aids in film, on TV and when they are in the public eye. Why can’t I?
Somedays I want short straight hair, or short curly hair or medium length hair straight wavy or curly, or long hair in various types of curl or uncurl. If I owned wigs to meet these urges, people would point and say, “Is that a wig?”
No one does that to Gwyeth? When she was in the murder mystery with Mike Douglas and had short hair, she looked natural and not one review mentioned her short hair.
I plead for tolerance, diversity acceptance for women with wigs who like to look differently depending upon their moods.
Love me, love my hair, or the wig’s hair, whatever, whenever!
End of story.
So you are convicted that your debts are a serious liability and you want to pay them down. You are even convinced that your morning Latte is a vanity and a comfort that you are willing to part with.
Where else can you cut? On your total food bill, for starters.
Do you know how much you are spending a week on animal protein? Let’s add up the chicken, beef, burgers, fish, pork, ham, bacon, steak, cheese, milk and ice cream. Or you may say, let’s not! I’d rather be dead than eat cardboard everyday.
Hold the phone!
Where is it written that food has to be bland and hard to eat if it is not dripping with grease, delicious smelling fat from a steak grilling or chicken roasting? No where.
I’m not going to tell you that a veggie burger tastes exactly like an angus burger. I’m not that dumb. But if it’s a flame grilled Boca Burger, slathered with olive oil and cooked on a Foreman or other grill, and topped with Dijon mustard, Bermuda onion, a grilled Portabello mushroom moistened with a splash of sherry, and garnished with fresh arrugala on a homemade whole wheat bun, it’s not bad, not bad at all. Serve with French fried in olive oil sweet potato fries or oven baked red skin and sweet potatoes with garlic and rosemary, it’s really not bad at all.
Finish with Almond Jamoca Rice Dream frozen dessert with chocolate sauce and flaked coconut and it’s pretty darn good.
If you began with homemade guacamole and lime flavored corn chips, you have a meal that you will look forward to every week.
Okay one dinner down, 6 more to go.
If you become a vegetarian even 4 nights a week, you will save more than half your food budget. Use that to make one extra mortgage payment a year, applied to the principal and you will be out of debt fas ter than you thought possible.
How about baked pecan loaf smothered in ketchup for with vegetarian brown gravy on the side? Mashed redskin garlic potatoes, and a green salad on the side makes a dinner that rivals the best tasting greasy meat loaf you have ever had with leftovers for sandwiches for a couple of days means 2 down, 5 to go.
Stir fried eggplant in soy sauce and garlic, brown rice, steamed asparagus, green beans or broccoli and some sliced tomatoes make another memorable meal.
And so it goes.
Your budget will get fat, not you, as
you get healthier financially and physically
If I had ever asked for advice as to what remedies I should use when my hair turned from rich brown to charcoal grey in my early 30’s, I might have saved myself a lot of money, time, and angst. But I didn’t and now I can tell you about it.
If you only use highlights to compliment your natural color and never do all over hair color, you will never have roots and your color will age naturally over time. That’s the big secret. It’s not as exciting as it is to go from brown to platinum blonde, to red, to auburn to light red, and back and forth again like the buoy bobbing in ocean lanes. But it would provide stability and more naturalness to one’s “look.” Who knew?
So when I decided to liberate myself from the bondage of hair color one day last October (2006), it cost me a lot in money, time and reflection.
It seems there is a chemical that can be used on hair to “lift” the applied color out of it without much hair damage. This can be done 3 times in a day, but not 4 and it costs $75 per application. Yikes!
So I did that one day, with a hairdresser’s gentle help, and after the 3 treatments, he put light blonde highlights on the strawberry blonde strands that were left on my head.
Within 2 days I was transformed from a dark brown hair color to a very light, light blonde, so light that as my natural white hair grew in, you would barely notice the difference.
Then it dawned on me that if I had only been using highlights and not over all color, this process would have looked much more natural for decades, like my friend Anne B. from NC. Her hair is gorgeous. I think her colorist uses different colors of highlights periodically so that there are many natural looking colors in her hair and the effect is gorgeous. She never looks like she needs to have her hair done. Every single day it looks wonderful. Who knew?
So now, 10 months later, I have almost all white hair and I pledge to be “rootless” forever. What a freedom it is to never worry about covering up the white that used to peep out from my roots within a few days after paying a lot to cover them. And who knew that it would look good?
With a little bronzer in my makeup, I don’t look pale everywhere. Defined eyes and bronzer on my cheeks keep me from looking dead. Instead, I look healthy and natural and almost like a platinum blonde. The blonde highlights come from the John Freida shampoo, conditioner and glaze that I use about once every 4 or 5 days. I buy the potions at Wal-Mart and I have become very low maintenance! Finally!
I even cut my hair by myself. Since my hair is shoulder length, I can just feel it in the shower, dripping wet and cut in a straight line. Then, my husband cleans up the line when I am out of the shower, still with wet hair. We only have to do this about once every 2 or 3 months and I’m done.
The moral of this story is that just when you think you know what you are doing, you almost definitely don’t. Ask questions and listen to answers, especially in the areas of grooming that you think are not open to discussion.
Try it! You may just begin to look better than you ever thought possible. Honest!
When I got an estimate that my brand new chrome shower would cost $1600 to change in order to coordinate better with new bronze lights and faucets, I rebelled. There had to be a better way.
The antique bronze/gold look began to dominate my master bath and the chrome shower stuck out like a poor relation at the Queen’s coronation. The shower needed a lift and replacing it when it was almost brand new seemed so wasteful and ridiculous.
So, I hatched a plan to paint it.
I have never done this before and I was a bit overwhelmed with the prospect of painting metal in a way that would hold up under repeated assaults by water and personal and bathroom cleansers.
First, I went to Michaels and bought small vials of indoor/outdoor, weather proof paint on sale for 60 cents a bottle. It is a mystery to me how it can be “all weather” and water based, but it is. The second paint I bought was an oil based product “rub n’buff” in an antique gold finish. I had used this to enculturate some wall mounted towel racks, applying it over back wrought iron with great results.
Then, all set to go with brushes and desire, I procrastinated for 3 months, overwhelmed by the task, fearing that my work would be useless after the first shower would ruin my work.
Second, after 3 months, I asked my carpenter/painter to sand the chrome and tape up the area for me. Facing his questions as to how my project was going shamed me into action.
Third, I commandeered one of my husband’s old shirts to wear while I began. Then with my husband agreeing to answer the phones, make the meals and run the house for the day, I began.
I learned a lot in this process, about being continually haunted by the prospect of waste and failure. I persevered only because I forced myself. But I was sure the paint would not cover, it would look messy, faked and crappy.
The first day I just finished three coats of the black bas coat. It was messy but the tape saved the day. I began to see that the silicone that is used to bind the glass to the chrome would not accept paint and I worried anew about the failure I persisted in creating.
The second day I applied the antique gold finish and I loved the creative process of inventing brush strokes that looked dappled, splashed and antiqued.
After letting these coats dry, I bought a clear finish top coat and used a third day to apply that. Then I left town. Not that I was running away, but the end of my work coincided with an out of town work trip. Out of sight out of mind. This was the time for the chemicals to “cure.”
Well, it looks great! I look like I have a high end shower. If it hold until we have hordes of company for my mother-in-law’s 101st birthday in October, I will be happy. I still lack confidence in the final result, what it will look like in a year, after showers, cleanings, and bathroom humidity. But at least I will have bought myself time to find a less expensive company to redo the shower and to put this expense in my budget.
I treated this project like building a stage set. It must look great for the audience, and when the audience goes home, who cares. But I care. So I wonder if this will be the permanent solution or not.
Sometimes you have more time than money and sometimes you have more money than time. Wisdom is knowing the difference.